By "social media" we mean any large computer network that allows people to interact in shared communities. The big ones of course are Facebook, Twitter (X), and Instagram, but we can't forget newer platforms like Discord and Slack.
Dedicated video sites are off-topic here and YouTube has its own separate thread
.
What we should discuss in this OTC topic are news items, business operations, and activities by the networks themselves, not specific things posted by users. Those should go into threads appropriate to the subjects of those posts. For example, if an actor tweets about a film, we'd discuss that in the Media forum topic for the film, not here. If Facebook changes its policies, that could be discussed here.
The politics, motives, competency and wider business activities of the owners and leaders of social media companies (e.g. Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg) are also off-topic — except in situations where they are directly making specific policy for the platform.
Talking about a particular Instagram policy change (or a high-profile ban on a specific user) directly announced by Mark Zuckerberg would be acceptable in this thread, speculating about Zuckerberg's wider motivations wouldn't be.
The thread's also not about "dumb thing [public figure] said on [social media platform]". If there isn't a specific thread related to the subject of the statement (e.g. US Politics), then it's probably gossip and not worth talking about.
created back in 2020 that we never opened. Unfortunately, it's a little stale, so bumping it isn't going to work very well, but I would like to restart it. The reason I'm doing so is that the Computer Thread seems to have become the de facto place for this sort of talk, and it's a big tonal clash with talking about computer tech.
The hot topic of the day is Elon Musk's bid to acquire Twitter. We first discussed it in the Computer Thread, starting roughly here, and I am not going to rehash the entire discussion. Instead, I am going to resume from the last post:
CNBC: Twitter is reportedly taking another look at Musk takeover bid
Twitter's board is reportedly meeting with Elon Musk and may seek to negotiate on his buyout offer. Musk claims to have secured $46 billion in funding to buy the company at a valuation of $43 billion and is preparing to make a tender offer to its shareholders.
While the board has passed a poison pill, it could be facing resistance to that from groups of shareholders and will want to talk things out rather than face a hostile takeover. It's also possible that Twitter's stock could crash if the offer fails to go through.
Another possible topic was originally posted here.
Ars Technica: EU to unveil landmark law to force Big Tech to police illegal content
Following on from the recently passed Digital Markets Act, which requires large tech companies to unbundle first-party software from hardware platforms, the proposed Digital Services Act will require medium and large social media platforms and search engines to police hate speech and disinformation while adding additional protections for children against targeted marketing.
It also bans "dark patterns", which manipulate or trick people into clicking on ads or other content. The article doesn't explicitly say what that means, but I assume it includes things like disguising ads to look like parts of a site's user interface, hiding "close" buttons, and such.
For large companies, the requirements would go into effect immediately. For medium companies, they would have a grace period to implement the changes.
Thierry Breton, the EU’s internal market commissioner, has warned that Big Tech has become “too big to care.”
This phrase, "too big to care", intrigues me. It's an indictment of the idea that these companies have decided that growth and engagement metrics overwhelm any sense of social responsibility.
In my opinion, a law like this would be impossible in the United States, since it would be challenged (likely successfully) on First Amendment grounds.
Edited by Mrph1 on Dec 12th 2023 at 11:24:56 AM
Visiting from the Hoag Galaxy
The Babylon Bee put out a transphobic tweet (it was an incredibly shitty “joke” along the lines of the attack helicopter one), got the account suspended and were told “if you delete that tweet, you’ll get your account back.” They threw a fit, went “I AM BEING SILENCED” in a bunch of places where they were very much not silenced and Musk was like “I will buy twitter to stop this hilarious comedy from being censored”.
Not Three Laws compliant.
Calendar enthusiast
That's what blogs are for. If he wanted to go further, he could have hired some designers to make him a nice personal website for a few lakh dollars at most. Tesla and SpaceX both have their own sites; surely he knows there is an entire web beyond the popular social media sites.
No, buying Twitter was a badly a though trout financial flex which he didn't expect to have to follow through on.
Ukrainian Red Cross
The pattern that we are seeing goes far beyond Musk—right wing views are tolerated and encouraged, while views that oppose the spread of right wing views are given layers of trigger warnings, or deleted altogether. The reason, of course, is that wealthy, powerful people are heavily trending authoritarian these days, and aren't likely to stop now.
Musk buying Twitter fits that overall pattern, but it's just one symptom of the overall malaise.
Like reflections in the glass!
"these days"? You assume like their drive towards dragocially hoarding wealth doesn't entail an authoritarian-leaning bent?
Anka Aquila
I think DeMarquis meant that wealthy elites are leaning authoritarian in a much more overt way than in previous years.
Ever since Trump's presidency whatever veneer of decency these people pretended to have has been thrown out of the window.
Instead of focusing on relatives that divide us, we should find the absolutes that tie us.
Yeah. They used to have some class about it. You never used to hear that, for example, the major shareholders of General Motors were meddling in elections. Not that they didn't have their ways of lobbying behind the scenes, of course, but no one was so crude as to say it out loud.
What we are seeing here is a more dangerous version of elite populism (let's call it what it is) that is more dangerous and could conceivably threaten the Republic.
The Best Worst Psychonaut
Trump definitely didn't help but I feel like they would have gone down this road eventually anyway - they only pretended to be decent before because they felt like the people they were screwing over couldn't actually fight back. It's the same reason why Anglo-American conservatism has mostly abandoned the old laissez-faire 'live and let live' approach to people who disagree with them - it was okay as long as they stayed in their lane and didn't actually threaten the status quo.
I don't see any version of the past seven or so years where dissatisfaction with capitalism and the rich doesn't increase, save for the most unrealistically utopian scenarios (and to be clear, I'm not suggesting it was inevitable Trump or someone like him was elected, I'm just suggesting that wealthy elites were probably going to feel increasingly insecure as popular dissatisfaction with them also increased and no solutions were in sight - the fact that it's still going on even after Trump was booted out is a testament to that, I think). But now I'm probably getting off-topic.
Edited by PresidentStalkeyes on Jun 4th 2023 at 9:20:01 AM
"If you think like a child, you will do a child's work."
Calendar enthusiast
![[up]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/smiles/arrow_up.png "[up]"){kind=icon}
That's true. History is decided not by the actions of Great Men, but by powerful social, economic, environmental, and geographic forces. The Trump presidency didn't come out of nowhere; Trump got elected because the Republican Party had been going ever more cacacoocoo since Nixon, and one of Trump's presidential campaigns happened to coincide with the party finally deciding to go full fascist. Had Trump missed the opportunity to run for president because he slipped on a banana skin or something, the Republicans would definitely have chosen somebody sanee to run in 2016, and he might well have lost to Clinton, but the alt right would have continued to rise, and America would have had a Trump-like president eventually.
To keep this on topic, social media shows a comparable trajectory. I have opined in the past that social media was a mistake, but it's not like it emerged fully formed from the mind of Tom from MySpace. The web mostly replaced Usenet because it is more flexible and easier to use, and forum threads are easier to follow than those on Usenet. Social media is the logical progression; by shifting the foundational unit from conversations to accounts, it emphasises the individual, and humans connect to individuals. Data and privacy scandals flowed logically from this, as the site owners have to make money somehow, and would you look at that, they have tons of useful data on what sort of things individuals like.
Likewise, centralisation was the direct consequence of the web getting popular. When it was smaller, it wasn't too hard to be a member if a few communities. When its get huge and popular, it can be hard to maintain accounts on sites catering to all of one's interests, so might as well just go to one of the big sites where you can talk to everyone about everything.
The Fediverse is a reaction both to data exploitation and centralisation, as people seek a return to the old days of smaller, more tightly-knit and personal sites, free if corporate exploitation, but without losing the greater ability to connect with people that Big Social offers. What's interesting to me is that the Fediverse pretty much snuck up on the tech industry. It trundled along, quietly growing with little attention from tech journalists or big companies, until Musk gave Mastodon a giant boost and now the industry suddenly had to pay attention to the elephantimorph which they had never noticed before but was in the room all along.
Ukrainian Red Cross
Perpetually Confused
Twitter's Ad sales down 59% last month compared to same period last year according to internal figures. Staff believes the decline is going to increase.
Instagram lifts ban on prominent vaccine disinformationist RFK Jr. They justify it on the grounds that he is a candidate for the Democratic Party's presidential nomination. Nevermind that he cultivates support primarily from far right MAGA figures openly hostile to Democrats who mostly encouraged him to run to cause chaos.
Figure of Hourai
"But this person who got banned wants to do important politics now!" And? They got banned before that, they can do politics at arm's length.
Avatar Source
Calendar enthusiast
I've voted in elections where none of the candidates used social media and I'm not even middle aged yet.
This does put Kennedy at a disadvantage, but that's just facing the consequences of your actions.
Ukrainian Red Cross
rollin' on dubs
Hello, a few of you might know me from the Mil and Aviation threads.
Around 3 years ago I finally went and made myself a Reddit account. I'm active there on r/Army, R/Heroforge and a few other subs.
Welp - seems Reddit has done stuck their nose in it:
Tl;dr - Reddit is charging a HUGE price increase for 3rd party apps. Several subs (including ones I subscribe to) will "go dark" in protest because they use those 3rd party apps to be mods, view reddit without (or reduce) ads and in the case of the blind/visually impaired - they need 3rd Party Apps to even use Reddit.
Louis Rossman has a video on the subject:
I am biased because I have an ex who is legally blind and I run an adblocker for Reddit - seeing the decline of Reddit is a shame and I don't know what I'd replace it with.
Edited by TairaMai on Jun 6th 2023 at 10:29:03 AM
All night at the computer, cuz people ain't that great. I keep to myself so I won't be on The First 48
Yeah, I still use Reddit a fair amount (almost entirely via a third-party app incidentally) and this is a massive deal currently. The userbase is largely united in this being an awful decision. Said app developers have also made it clear there's no way they could actually afford to pay that fee.
Trans Siberian Anarchestra (it/they)
Is there a reason people use apps for Reddit instead of a web browser?
The Revolution Will Not Be Tropeable
The third party apps make for a better browsing experience on mobile, i think. i personally didnt even known there were third party apps, i always just used the browser
I use the web version of Reddit too, but I also use an extension that gives it more features and even the devs behind it are worried about the API changes.
Remember, these idiots drive, fuck, and vote. Not always in that order.
Reddit on mobile constantly nags you to use an app.
Movie and TV Goddess
I use the web version for Reddit. It's really hard for me to do everything on my cell phone, especially when it comes to downloading videos onto You Tube.
I love animation, TV, movies, YOU NAME IT!
Third-party apps also help with things like allowing visually-impaired users to parse their apps.
Figure of Hourai
Discord's started rolling out its name changes properly, now.
Got to keep mine as expected, all good over here. ![[lol]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/lol2v12_4863.png "[lol]"){kind=small}
Redmess
Seems like I can keep mine, too, so far.
Optimism is a duty.
Figure of Hourai
Either it asked you to select a new username and you got to keep it, or you'll find out when it gets round to you.
Avatar Source
rollin' on dubs
Noaqiyeum - to answer your question about 3rd party apps on Reddit, many love them on mobile as they are better than Reddit's app. Mods of subreddits use them as tools for their mod duties and -most importantly- the blind and visually impaired find that 3rd party apps work best for them.
The subreddit r/Blind is up in arms about their community being pretty much shut down if they can't use 3rd party apps.
Edited by TairaMai on Jun 7th 2023 at 6:45:29 AM
All night at the computer, cuz people ain't that great. I keep to myself so I won't be on The First 48
I believe that was the Babylon Bee.
Every accusation by the GOP is ALWAYS a confession.